5 The Arcanum of the Monarchy

The Anointed

Sie, die trauernd »nach JHWH« stöhnten, haben nur seine Siegesmacht, nicht seine

Herrschaft gemeint. Das Palladium kehrt nicht heim, die Obmacht des Feindes

dauert fort, die für die Stunde gegebene Antwort reicht für die Folge der Stunden

nicht zu.

—Martin Buber, “Wie Saul König wurde”

Is Saul too among the prophets?

—Israelite Proverb (1 Samuel 10:12)

Introduction

In the early 1960s, when compiling the German edition of his three-volume
We rk e, Buber rejoined articles he had published on Samuel, Saul, and the rise of
the monarchy under their original heading: Der Gesalbte (The Anointed).^1 This
marked the first publication of any work with that name, although the separate
pieces had been available for over a decade.^2 In 1951 Buber estimated that when
he ceased work on Der Gesalbte, in 1938, the work was about half finished.^3 He
does not specify what the second half would have discussed. However, we may
speculate that since the first half deals with the roles of Samuel and Saul in the
transition from judgeship to monarchy, the second half would likely address the
rejection of Saul as king, the rise of David, and the continuation of the Davidic
line in Solomon, perhaps concluding with the secession of the northern kingdom
and the reign of Jeroboam I.
In content and style, The Anointed is the direct sequel to Kingship of God. It
starts where that book ended, with the military crisis that precipitated the end
of the anarcho-theocracy and the charismatic leadership of the judges, and with
the crystallization of the idea of permanent, hereditary monarchy to solve the
problems of foreign domination and domestic chaos. Like Kingship of God, The
Anointed belongs simultaneously to two conversations: one in the field of biblical
scholarship, concerning the dating, authorship, and interpretation of scriptural
texts, and another in the field of political theory. In fact, given the subject mat-
ter of The Anointed, one expects it to engage even more explicitly with political